COWGIRLS, Installation, mixed media, 30’ x 10’ x 15’, Installation Gallery, San Diego 1987
COWGIRLS began as a search for a definitive meaning of the term. Instead, the installation uncovered the complexities of various portrayals of the western heroine, juxtaposing fact and fiction through a collage of disparate entities. Images and text were appropriated from many sources: for example, literary fiction (Zane Greys Riders of the Purple Sage, Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), autobiographies (Dale Evans), diaries (Calamity Jane), circus performers (Eunice Winkler), rodeo riders (Tad Lucas), Hollywood movies ("The Misfits"), commercial advertising (the Maidenform model as a cowgirl), etc.